


an empty space to fill in

by lost_decade



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 20:20:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14678766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_decade/pseuds/lost_decade
Summary: Lewis thought he’d made it clear over recent months that he doesn’t need Nico’s friendship, doesn’t need anything from him at all.





	an empty space to fill in

**Author's Note:**

> Set post-China. This was supposed to be a quick PWP but weeks of obsessing later...
> 
> Title from Blue by Joni Mitchell.

Lewis had a bad knock once, back in his karting days, heart in mouth and asphalt in front of his eyes where the sky should’ve been. Afterwards he’d said that it was okay because he was fearless, even as they’d taped up his elbow and his dad had looked at him with the strangest expression he’d ever worn. It was okay and he didn’t think too much about what had happened four years earlier at Kimbolton, or about how easily his fourteen-year-old bones could have been crushed, blood like fuel flowing out onto the track. Afterwards Nico had held him, kissing it better, and back then that had been more than enough.

Nothing’s the same as it was then though, another lifetime. The lows had never lasted as long when he was a kid; the highs had shone with an optimism that too often falters.

\--

Sometimes when he can’t sleep he thinks about Michael, about winning and losing and what you’re left with at the end of it all. Sometimes he thinks about Ayrton, about how furiously he’d wept when he found out what happened that day at Imola. Would Ayrton have liked him, he wonders. Or would he have seen straight through him.

This thought spiral can go fuck itself, as can the jittery tension that has him unable to keep still, pacing around the hotel room making a mess of packing and trying to remember what time his PA had said the flight was.

Clutching at his forearm hard enough that his nails leave half-moon crescents on the skin, something to focus on other than the clenching pain in his stomach, the loss of control, he sinks down onto the couch, letting the exhaustion sag from his bones. Already it’s turning into a tough season.

Lewis'll bounce back, this is inevitable and he knows it, yet you're only as good as the car beneath you and he's seen too much dejection on Fernando’s face to know he wouldn't withstand the same. He'd go. Trouble is he's not ready to go. He still isn't sure if he's ready to stay, the way things are. _The way things are without Nico._ Or _with Nico,_ as it turns out. With Nico walking through the paddock as if he owns it, as if everything is easy.

Everything is most definitely not easy.

\--

Lewis thought he’d made it clear over recent months that he doesn’t need Nico’s friendship, doesn’t need anything from him at all.

This is what he quite pointedly relays to the German when he deigns to show up outside Lewis’ hotel room an hour later with a look on his face that makes Lewis wonder if he’s forgotten the last five years. He steps aside to let Nico in, because even though he hates having a weakness it’s better to acknowledge it than lie to yourself about its existence.

Lewis has only made it halfway through getting dressed after his shower, sweatpants slung low to show the top of his underwear, chest bare. He can feel Nico’s eyes on him as he turns to compose himself, trying to decide how this is going to go.

“I haven’t seen this one before,” Nico almost seems surprised, his fingers familiar as they brush against Lewis’ left shoulder, circling the hands of the clock tattooed there.

“Yeah I had it done in the winter,” Lewis tells him. “You don’t need to be here, you know. Really.”

“I was worried about you,” Nico says, sitting down on the couch with one leg crossed over the other, hands clasped together in his lap as if he’s about to initiate a therapy session.

“You don’t need to worry about me. I’d rather you didn’t.”

Nico smiles and fuck yes Lewis you idiot. He scolds himself for his inability to ever keep anything back from Nico. His hand clenches into a fist at his side, yet even as the thought of throwing Nico out crosses Lewis’ mind he dismisses it - he could but he can’t.

“I know what can happen when things aren’t going well,” Nico says, far too knowingly. “Remember Baku.”

“That was years ago, things are different now. Is that what you came here for, to check I haven’t trashed the room? Well I’m sorry to disappoint you, man.”

“You know why I’m here, Lewis,” Nico says, resting his hand on Lewis’ thigh. “You can tell me to get out and I will, if that’s what you want.”

Regrettably, that is not what Lewis wants. He relaxes against Nico, silently despairing at how he can never say what he wants, which even more than a nice thorough fucking is simply to be held, to have Nico stroke his hair and cuddle him and make him feel special. Even thinking it makes him feel slightly queasy.      

“I guess…do you want a beer then, if you’re not going anywhere?” It's an awkward offer, but if Lewis has to deal with Nico then he’d rather not be fully sober, or sober at all to be honest.

“I thought you didn’t drink during the season,” Nico says in a tone that makes Lewis want to strangle him.

“Yeah well, have to make up for the lack of podium champagne somehow.” Lewis opens the minibar, retrieving two small cans of Heineken and passing one to Nico, sitting beside him.

“If you want my advice--”

Lewis can’t help but laugh. “Come on then man, let’s hear your great words of wisdom.”

Nico ignores the interruption. “You’re like an open book, Lewis. Everyone has a bad run sometimes. Maybe it's Seb’s year, maybe it’s yours. But he’ll think it’s his when he sees you getting affected by it. He’ll use it to his advantage.”

“Like you did?”

“We’re not talking about me.”

“Boring subject anyway,” Lewis snaps.

They drink in silence, Lewis letting his mind wander. Baiting him isn’t going to get a rise, not now. It had worked once with the ugliness of the fight but that’s all history. There’s an air of untouchability to Nico now that Lewis wants to crush. He doesn’t want Nico to be worried about him, he’s got a mother for that. At the same time he can’t quite ask what it is that he wants of Nico, but the German knows, he’s sure of it. Either they fight or they fuck – he guesses it’s better than being indifferent, it’s something at least.

“Just to be clear,” Lewis says when the tin is empty, lager fresh and bitter on his tongue, “I don’t want you here because you’re _worried_. I don’t want you showing up in Baku, or, or Monaco. You can go be the fountain of all knowledge for RTL but I don’t want you putting your arm around me in the paddock and pretending we’re friends, okay. I don’t fucking want you.”

“I know,” Nico replies as he gets to his feet, pulling Lewis with him and adding “I know how much you wish you didn’t,” before leaning in to kiss him with a dominance reserved entirely for Lewis.

Lewis’ fingers skim the front of Nico’s t-shirt as their mouths clash together, catching on the hem and lifting it a little. He hates it. Hates the pale smart-casual Riviera style. Hates Nico the reporter. Hates how he’s taken himself away and dared to be happy elsewhere. He backs Nico against the wall, cradling his neck as he leans in to kiss him.

Nico can feel the tension in Lewis’ hands, how his pulse thrums erratically against Nico’s own, race adrenaline still working its way out of him. Lewis’ tongue feels like it belongs in Nico’s mouth, the taste of him a familiar echo of other times. They swallow up each other’s moans, Nico surging forward for more, closer, his hands sliding up Lewis’ bare sides.

“Wait. Wait a second, Nico.”

Nico takes half a step back, glaring at his former teammate uncomprehendingly. Wait for what? His hands slip from Lewis’ shoulders and he thinks that maybe he really has read this wrong, that Lewis is about to tell him to leave. Which would be the best thing entirely. Nico’s heart sinks.

“I want you to put it on,” Lewis says instead, throwing Nico’s train of thought completely off. Does he mean a condom, because yeah that goes without saying with them these days. But Lewis is pointing towards the chair in the corner of the room, the crumpled material scrunched up on it.

“I won’t look,” Lewis continues, as if that’s what the issue might be. “I need to make a quick call.” He leans in to brush his lips against Nico’s again, walking through into another room of the suite and leaving the German standing there alone. If these are the new terms then Nico is tempted to just tell him to go fuck himself, to ignore the sudden curiosity tight in his belly. “You can’t remake us,” he says under his breath.

Lewis is no longer listening.

\--

It doesn’t fit entirely perfectly, the couple of inches in height that Nico has on Lewis means that the legs are a fraction short, the sleeves not quite covering his wrists fully; but there’s an unexpected intimacy to it. The nomex is still warm from Lewis’ body, slightly sweat dampened and it should be disgusting, it should be gross rather than arousing yet there’s something about it that gives Nico goosebumps, his skin prickling as he pulls on the race suit over the fireproofs. It’s as if he’s stepped inside Lewis’ skin, the scratchy warmth of the material around him like a cocoon, unleashing a thousand tiny bursts of memory, the deja vu of _before_.

“Fuck” Lewis murmurs from the doorway, lip caught between his teeth, as Nico finishes fastening the suit. Their eyes meet, an understanding as their thoughts converge; 2013, 2014, 2015 --- 1999.

Whatever this is between them it’s omnipresent, neither the years or the distance or Nico in civilian clothing can diminish it. The analogy makes Lewis smile, as if they’re both military, yet with him the only one still at war while Nico’s escaped to a normality that Lewis has no understanding of. Ultimately, he despises himself for still needing this, the lack of control both repulsive and thrilling; there should be no place in his carefully ordered life for this, not anymore, yet seeing Nico wearing Lewis’ own sweat soaked overalls hits him deep in the pit of his stomach, heart stuttering with the need to kill the space between them.

“Why do you…” Nico starts to ask, the intended question redundant almost the second it slips from his mouth. Nico knows why, they both do, even as this is something Lewis won’t bring himself to say for fear that the words will tip the balance too much and cause Nico to leave.

“You look good, man,” Lewis tells him instead, conversationally like they’re catching up over a coffee and Nico’s dick isn’t leaking all over Lewis’ fireproof underwear that he didn’t have to put on but _chose to_ , barely resisting the urge to bury his face in it first.

Outside in the hotel corridor there’s the clamour of suitcases being dragged along the carpeted floor, voices belonging to team members, the team that Nico is no longer part of and can’t get too close to anymore lest some secrets spill out elsewhere, telemetry turning up in another garage. Lewis wants Nico to go just as much as he wants him to stay, a bitter paradox. He crosses the room, narrowly avoiding knocking the replica Song Dynasty vase from the side table, hands fisted in the front of his own race suit he drags Nico to him, an animalistic groan passing between their lips as their mouths mash together again with a clash of teeth and the messy slide of saliva. Lewis knows he’s kissing like he’s auditioning for porn but is unable to regulate himself.

If he was a better man, as strong a man as he is out on the track, he’d steer this slowly, make it a beautiful manoeuvre rather than a desperate fight to stay off the astro-turf. Lewis is not a stronger man, not here – not with Nico. He thinks it, though. As his fingers prise open the velcro, as they fumble to get the zip down, hands snaking inside the race suit to map all the planes of Nico’s chest, the soft dips beside his hip bones where Lewis’ mouth fits so perfectly; he thinks of the first time they ever touched each other and the tender caress of Nico’s lips against his bloodied elbow, the surety he’d felt that Nico would always be there to put him back together. Digging his fingernails into Nico’s back he tugs at the fireproofs, feeling his former teammate smile into the kiss.

“I’ve only just put them on and you want me naked already?” Nico challenges, breathlessly.

“I asked you to put them on _so_ I can take them off you,” Lewis buries his face against Nico’s chest, breathing in the scent of them both. He slides his hand down to press against Nico’s dick just to feel him tremble, before falling less than gracefully to his knees and pressing his face there, mouthing against the outline of the damp material as Nico slips out of the arms of the race suit, pushing it down to his hips so there’s only one layer between them.    

Lewis grips his arse tight, pushing his face up against Nico’s crotch just to feel him hot and weeping, Lewis’ own cock just as hard in anticipation.

It’s such a long time since Lewis has felt Nico inside him, their recent previous encounters so few and far between have consisted of perfunctory, soulless hand jobs, lonely encounters.

This feels different somehow. Lewis wants it to be different, set apart from those times late at night on the narrow steps that lead down towards Saint Devote, Nico looking at his watch while Lewis stumbles over all the words in his head that he can’t say, hoping Nico can feel them instead in the flick of his wrist, the press of his thumb against hot, wet flesh.

Lewis bites at his lip and tries not to remember being fourteen and feeling consummately queer and black and working class and terrified that the only person who’d ever accept him in the racing world for any of these things was the golden haired boy that he couldn’t beat _and_ love at the same time. They don’t work. They never have, and perhaps it’s because Nico looks at him and just _knows_ that he’s still that person underneath – perhaps that’s why they always come back to each other and repel each other simultaneously. Lewis rocks back on his heels, pulling Nico’s flame resistant top up a little to slide his hands up beneath it, grazing the soft trail of hair that leads down from his belly button as he looks up into Nico’s eyes. Nico is happier without Lewis. Lewis knows this, knows they can’t be fixed. And yet. “Will you fuck me,” Lewis asks, a pleading edge to the words.

Yes, Nico thinks. Yes, always now. Now that there’s no title to win or lose.    

The top half of the fireproofs come off, thrown to one side to never be washed so that Lewis can wrap the scratchy material around his dick on some other day and pretend that the harshness of it is the calluses of Nico's fingers instead. Together they stumble back towards the desk by the wall, ungainly and desperate, Lewis scrabbling for the lube he’d retrieved from the bathroom and shoving it into Nico’s hand. The race suit is half off by now, shoved down to hang loose around Nico’s thighs. They step apart from one another for just a moment while Lewis kicks off his sweatpants and underwear, long enough for the doubt to enter both their minds. For his part, Nico wishes he knew how to do this some other way, the way he’d hoped for when he’d knocked at Lewis’ door. If he knew how to hold Lewis and tell him he missed him, that the same part of him that had yearned for the Championship title for so long was the same part that could never be complete without Lewis then he would. They only know how to do things one way, though.

Lewis leans back against the desk, glancing down at Nico’s dick, flushed and hard against his stomach. He reaches out to cup Nico’s balls, running the tip of his finger up from the base of his dick to the head and then flat up Nico’s stomach, his chest, before sliding an arm around to pull him closer, leaning back onto the desk and wrapping his legs around Nico’s waist. Touching him is a torturous ache, a pleasure like no other but one that can’t be sustained; later Nico’ll leave and Lewis will be left alone with his thoughts and his hand and the emptiness of Nico not being inside him anymore. In racing you have to trust when to make the right choices, to make the correct sacrifices - and Lewis has, it’s seen him well - however none of that means jack shit in here and right now he reckons he’d give away at least three or four of his career race wins to feel the same way he did at fourteen, coughing and spluttering, wrecked on Smirnoff Ice and exhilaratedly happy as Nico came in his mouth for the very first time. Lewis lost himself somewhere along the way, and he can't even pinpoint it now - whether it was the years of trying to wrestle himself into the sort of sponsor friendly wet dream that Ron wanted him to be or in the years of relationships that just wouldn’t work no matter who he tried to be for them.

There’s no finding himself in Nico now though, Nico’s skin no longer holds the sweat, tears and anguish of loss, all that has gone now, replaced with the ease of a happiness that Lewis could never give him.   

It’s awkward and uncomfortable, the way that Lewis is balanced on the edge of the desk, one hand braced on the surface behind and the other at Nico's neck, holding him close. He shivers at the feel of Nico's fingers pushing into him, opening his legs wider and bearing down against the intrusion, Nico teasing him with a precision developed through years of this. Nico had decided before the introduction of the race suit into the equation, that should anything happen here it would be for Lewis more than for himself, yet the moment of sheer bliss when he's all the way inside the Brit is so complete, so perfect and agonisingly wonderful as he fights the urge to move straight away, that Nico wonders how either of them have managed to survive without this. He lays Lewis back on the desk, looking down at the tattooed planes of his chest, teasing at his nipples until Lewis is trembling, legs tightening around Nico's waist, his ass clenching around Nico's dick until it almost becomes a competition of who can hold off begging first. It is Lewis who cracks, grabbing Nico's wrist, urging him to move with desperate murmured pleas.

The moment that Nico starts fucking into him, Lewis wishes they hadn’t done it this way, like this he can’t pretend it’s someone else’s hands gripping his hips, a stranger’s dick inside him, can't control the emotions that play across his face. He shifts a little, one hand braced behind him on the desk and the other clutching at Nico’s side for balance as he tightens his legs around Nico’s waist.

The desk slams against the wall and Lewis bites at the inside of his cheek, overwhelmed. When Nico’s dick nudges against his prostate he can’t maintain his composure, Nico’s name spilling from his lips over and over, interspersed with the kind of filth that he would never say to anyone else, all the things he’d let Nico do, has let him do on so many other occasions. He can see the effect it has on the German, his pupils dilated and moans broken whenever Lewis squeezes tight around him. Nico pauses for a moment, his forehead pressed against Lewis’ as he breathes heavily, fighting the need to come. Lewis kisses him, licking into his mouth and revelling in the scrape of stubble against his chin, if it wasn’t for that this could be years ago, as if they were just starting out.

“I couldn't stay,” Nico confesses, looking into Lewis’ eyes, the exposure so harsh that Lewis has to close his own, biting at Nico’s lip.

“I didn't want you to,” Lewis snaps back, but Nico’s hands are on the sides of his face, holding him with such reverence that the words are rendered devoid of truth. Time seems to wind down to nothing, the stillness between them a fine thread that even Lewis can't bring himself to damage with another quip that Nico will probably see right through anyway.

When did I lose you, Lewis thinks.

Did I ever really have you, Nico wants to ask.

When Nico starts thrusting into him again it’s with a renewed sense of purpose, as if he’s decided that making it last will only prolong the agony of not being able to have this in any way that matters. Lewis’ dick is leaking copiously by the time Nico’s hand closes around it, precome smeared across his stomach and more dribbling from the swollen head every time Nico grazes his prostate. Nico jerks him a few times, infuriatingly slowly, before bringing his hand up to his mouth, sucking Lewis’ precome from his fingers. The gesture makes Lewis shudder, helpless and needy; his carefully constructed persona fallen away. He wants to tell Nico he loves him, that he never wants this to end, but it’s easier to think it than to say it aloud and he has to keep something for himself.

“I love having you like this,” Nico whispers, grasping Lewis’ dick again, rubbing his thumb over the head and making him almost sob with the need to come. There’s sweat on Nico’s forehead and longing in his eyes and Lewis desperately hopes that he means I love _you_. The thought that that’s what Nico really wants to say is what pushes Lewis over the edge, shaking hard as the pleasure washes over him, thick ribbons of come coating his stomach and Nico’s hand as his asshole spasms around Nico’s dick. 

_I love being inside you_ , Nico wants to tell him, _I love your smile and your kindness and your terrible cooking, I loved all the dreams we had._ Lewis looks up at him softly, fondly, reaching to stroke at Nico’s balls before rubbing a finger against the base of his cock, the thin latex of the condom a barrier he wishes wasn’t there. The “you too, Nico,” that spills from his lips recalling school in Nice, vague echoes of literature class. _Et tu, Brute?_  

Nico grabs at his hips hard enough to bruise with the permission, mindlessly fucking into the tight heat of Lewis’ oversensitive body until he comes with a shudder, moaning Lewis’ name, the stupid fucking race suit still pushed halfway down his thighs. Lewis awkwardly tries to sit forward, wrapping his arms around Nico’s neck and holding him close, his face pressed against Nico’s shoulder to hide the fact that he’s closer to tears than he’s been since winning his fourth title. Their heavy breaths fill the hotel room and Nico remembers why he’s really here, that he wanted to tell Lewis he still believes in him, that he’d never bet against him in a title race against anyone, that 2016 almost destroyed him.

“I’m starting a karting team with Dino,” Nico says instead into the crook of Lewis’ neck, one hand idly stroking Lewis’ cheek as his dick softens inside him. “You could get involved as well if you wanted.”

Lewis’ chest tightens, he remembers for a moment being fourteen and in love, unstoppable; the days when nothing except karting and being with Nico mattered, trying to bribe Dino into not telling Keke all the things they got up to.

“It’s a nice dream,” he replies, shifting so that Nico’s dick slips out of him, wincing at the separation.   

“You’re still favourite for the title, you know,” Nico tells him when they've both dressed.

Lewis drops his head into his hands for a moment before glancing at the wrecked desk from where he's sitting at the end of the bed.

“I didn’t think I was your favourite anything anymore.”

Nico sighs in response, Lewis unable to look at him now, ashamed of his own vulnerability. “I’ve seen your vlogs you know,” Lewis says suddenly.  
“And it’s vlog, not vee-log. You don’t have to keep talking about us, it won’t help.”

“Won’t it? I keep hoping that maybe one day it will.”

“Hope won’t win you anything, man.”

“There’s nothing else I want to win,” Nico replies honestly, picking up the discarded Mercedes race suit, thumb rubbing over the number 44 on the front. Lewis watches as he presses it to his face, inhaling deeply before folding it and placing it wordlessly back on the chair on his way out.


End file.
